A Pirate's Life for Me
by Ishafel
Summary: Some girls dream of being princesses and some girls dream of being pirates.


A PIRATE'S LIFE FOR ME

Will thought she was running away from him, and Jack thought she running to _him_, but

the only thing Elizabeth wanted was freedom. She had thought, once, that nothing could be

more stifling than the life of a young lady of good family; she knew next to nothing, then, of the

life ordinary married women were saddled with. At least, as the governor's daughter, she had

been answerable to no man but her father, who had done his best to please her.

Her father had made certain allowances for her youth, her high spirits, even her

intelligence; Will wanted what he wanted and she had best do as she was told. On the _Pearl_

she had done as she pleased and it had pleased her to help with the work when she could. As

the wife of the young blacksmith's apprentice her duties were no less rigorous and far less

amusing. Swabbing decks she could bear; scrubbing floors she hated. She could stitch a sail as

well as any man but she had grown tired of mending her husband's clothes. And somehow it

was far worse to spend hours sweating bent over a fire place stirring the stew for dinner than to

spend those same hours below decks loading cannon during the hottest July on record.

Once she had been the belle of the island, and now Elizabeth was bitterly aware that

every woman present was laughing at her, and every man leering. They knew, the ordinary men

and women—whose lives were shapeless drudgery a world apart from the glitter of island

society—they knew what it was she had given up far better than her father did, or Norrington,

or even Jack Sparrow. If Will had truly loved her would he have been so eager to condemn her

to share the life he led?

Elizabeth had not been made for poverty, not for this endless penny-pinching misery,

anymore than she had been meant to wear white gloves and corsets. She was not meant to be a

lady, and perhaps she was not meant to be a woman at all. If she had been born a boy, how

different her life would have been. She would not waste her life, as Will seemed determined to

do, on steel and fire and iron. Not for her, this battle to earn respectability, to disappear, to be

ordinary.

There were only two legitimate routes to glory for a man of Will's class, and one was the

army and the other was the church. Will was too fiercely independent for one road and too

fond of women for the other. A man with fewer scruples might have turned to one of the shadier

roads by which a fortune can be won: to trade, to privateering, theft, piracy. Will was romantic

enough to see the honor in making his own way but he was not romantic enough for these.

Elizabeth, the governor's daughter and blacksmith's apprentice's wife and former

scourge of the Spanish Main, Elizabeth snuck away in the night like a runaway slave, made her

way to Tortuga and the _Black Pearl_ leaving behind only a note for her deserted husband. It

was a coward's way out, perhaps, but even the bravest of women must take the easy way

sometime. A part of her still loved Will and always would; she could not have born to see his

face when her words cut him to shreds.

In Tortuga she sold her wedding ring and bought a boy's clothing and a small light

sword. It was not as nice a blade as those Will made but it was a suitable weapon for a pirate.

After that she settled down at a small seedy boardinghouse and waited for the _Pearl_ to come

home to port. Every night she went to bed alone in a narrow bed on yellowed sheets and every

night she dreamed of hard capable hands on her body, beneath her nightdress. And sometimes

she came so hard she woke herself up, all from dreaming about fingers on her breasts and a pink

tongue between her legs.

When she finally saw the ragged proud sails and the flagless mast in the harbor Elizabeth

was seized by a sudden fit of shyness. For three days she could not bring herself to leave the

inn, she was so sure that anything that happened would destroy her. In the end she did not have

to seek them out, because they came to her. The innkeeper's wife pounded on the door with

one big red fist and when Elizabeth opened it there they were: Captain Jack Sparrow, golden

teeth gleaming in the dim light, and his fat, peg-legged bosun, and Anamaria his first mate,

dangerous as the sea. Elizabeth let them in, feeling unexpectedly shy, and smiled impartially at

them, careful not to meet their eyes. They knew what she wanted and what she was willing to

do to get it.


End file.
